Mommy Articles/Links

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Marriage: Year 2

During our second year of marriage, we had decided that we had enough of paying for someone else's mortgage in a million dollar Brooklyn brownstone. Our landlady wasn't happy. Of course not. Now she would have to pay her mortgage herself until she found a new tenant. Had she been a more pleasant maybe we would have sympathized. We decided to buy our own apartment, I know crazy right? Who BUYS an apartment? That's what you do if you live in NYC. We settled on a first floor co-op in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn. My husband also lived in this neighborhood after graduating from law school so he was very familiar with the area and loved it. The film Brown Sugar was filmed in our neighborhood to give you an idea. It's two blocks from where the New Jersey Nets basketball team will play once the project gets underway. Our life was filled with selecting paint colors, kitchen appliances, decisions on whether or not to keep or demolish the breakfast bar, etc. We had a good time and the process was wonderful. Our contractor got everything done on time and we moved into our new home.

I'm not a true city girl. I was born in a small town about 30 minutes from Toledo where I lived from age 6 to about 23 or 24. I had no family nearby which was the real issue. I knew people only through my husband. I did make a friend here and there at the various consulting jobs I held but there's nothing like being near family and friends. I just remembered that I worked on the African Burial Ground Project briefly in 2003. Once we found a church home, we joined the Marriage Enrichment Ministry where we made many of the friends who are yet in our lives today. What a blessing. It's helpful to surround yourselves with like minded couples.

I decided to continue working through a temp agency because I wanted to take a break from the Public Relations industry in which I worked for five years before getting married. I enjoyed it but wanted to work in community relations or even corporate responsibility at a major company. I also wanted to "try on" a few different jobs before accepting any offers. I worked at Bear Stearns in the Meeting/Investor Relations Department. I did score a temp to perm job with a national non-profit organization in Manhattan right down the street from MTV. Every day at 3 p.m. the screams from teens would start at MTV's TRL. You never knew who was going to show up or throw a concert in the middle of Times Square. I eventually left to begin an assignment at Time Warner Corporate in the Mergers & Acquisitions department. I guess being married to an M&A lawyer wasn't enough for me. I then moved to Finance and eventually Global Marketing where I was offered a job with the President and accepted it.

A few of the places we visited in year 1 -2 were the U.S. Virgin Islands; we celebrated our 1st anniversary in Aruba. We also made a last minute trip to New Orleans. In August. I spent a summer in Dallas in 1989 but I think N.O. has Dallas beat with the heat. I'm glad we were able to visit before the hurricane. What a treasure.

At the end of our 2nd year, we started talking about babies. I was ready. I'm four years older than hubby. We finally decided to start "trying." It took a few months to figure it out and I didn't realize you could only get pregnant a few days a month. Why don't we start telling teens this? If they insist upon having sex anyway, they should stay away from having it during those few days where pregnancy is practically inevitable. Makes sense to me.